Simple Monitor Riser

I needed a monitor riser, and the only ones I could find were cheap-looking, expensive plastic ones. While I could pick up a board and screw on some legs, I wanted to try crafting one a little nicer looking. And it worked!

Basically the only wood available here (Netherlands) at a decent price is pine, without going to a lumberyard. The box store I went to also happened to have some oak boards, and some other woods, but these are very expensive, and I am cheap. So I picked up a pine panel, Scots Pine I think, pre-glued and ready to be used. I wanted to a bit of color variation, so I picked up a strip of oak with a nice coloring on the sides..

How cheap am I?

The board was cut to size on a DIY table saw (cheap circular saw mounted to a sheet of MDF, no splitter; I’ve found that in the case of pinch, I stop the blade easily, rather than the blade throwing the workpiece, though I stay well away from ‘behind the blade’)

The curves in the pine were all cut with a brand new 7 euro jigsaw (brand Kinzo), with the stock blade.

I cleaned up the edges with a horrible 5 euro plane, which eventually developed a nick in the blade, which would gouge the wood.

The rounded bits on the oak were done entirely on the random orbital sander. This actually works very well, though I imagine I might prefer a belt sander.

Grooves and dado’s were routed, then chiseled square with a 5-euro-for-three chisel set.

Finish is Ikea Behandla wood oil. It’s a mix of tung oil, linseed oil, held in an emulsion in a water base, and at 5 euro’s a can, you can’t go wrong.

But it worked!

The feet are glued only in the front, to allow for a bit of expansion in the legs. The strips of oak are glued full length, with some alignment dowels internally (and two free extra holes in the left bumper, due to mis-measuring)